- I bought an awful-horrible-no-good vaccum from XS Cargo, which was like a liquidation store. It was on for a great slashed price deal from like $120 to $40 so I thought I was so smart. I read the box, read all the marketing jargon they had printed, and talked it out with my roommate while walking the store.. It came home. This so-called pet vaccuum, wouldn't pick up anything, including stuff from the tile floor. It was a pain to disassemble to empty and all around a bad decision. When I tried to take it back to XS they just pointed to the signs that say no refunds after opening (EVEN if it's defective, which I then started saying that I would take an exchange for the same model to see if it was just the one I got). I didn't buy anything from them after that, and my calls and emails to the company who made the vaccuum went unanswered. A year and a half later after being shelved in my garage I saw that some mice decided to start eating through the hose, so the whole vaccum ended up on the curb (and some poor soul took it a couple hours later).
- around Christmas a few years ago, my dad got off work and was tired. He went to pick up some groceries and on his way back to the car ran into some guy selling genuine leather coats. He gave a sob story about wanting to get enough money to buy his daughter something, and was saying that he was on his way back from a trade show and had a whole bunch of leather coat samples he could sell. He asked dad if he had $500 to buy some nice coats. My dad made the mistake of saying "I only have $200 sorry" and the crook quickly said he could have these 5 leather coats for that. My tired dad got swindled. While pretty and brand new coats with tags, they were not leather and not worth $40 each.
- never skimp on the cost of a Home Inspector. I did. I didn't the first time, on the first house I made an offer on. The first (expensive) guys provided me a huge detailed binder with a million pictures. They documented everything, they walked my dad and I through the house and talked to us like we were kids explaining what this and that meant (a little condescending for us but would be good for those who have no knowledge at all about house terms and such). They were super thorough and it was probably because of this inspection why I didn't buy that house. When I finally found the house I did want to buy, we wanted to go a little cheaper because we thought we knew everything. We went with a friend of my grandmas who was about to retire. Long story short, he caught nothing. He saw nothing wrong with the house and said it would be a good investment (it needed little things he said, nothing too major). He walked around the house first and then sat down at our table to write out everything (not as he went). We got one piece of paper from this guy (versus the entire binder and books and photos from the last guys). You get what you pay for as I ended up with the "house from hell" with every item needing replacement. Plus, since I got a home inspection, it waived me from going after the previous home owners for lack of full disclosure, and since he was a "family friend" it wasn't appropriate to sue him for not catching everything.
- From a very expensive mistake to a cheap mistake... We have a liquidation store near my home which has hit-and-miss good deals. On one visit they had a ton of shoes on for like $2 each. Yay! I found some sparkly black and grey zebra slip ons and thought I was in heaven. I tried one on and it fit, picked up the pair and bought them. Went to wear them the next day and discovered one foot was 2 sizes bigger than the other. Whomp whomp. I tried stuffing it with Kleenex but it was just too lopsided to work. Out they went.
The moral of the story..
1. Do your research. Get details on the item (cell phones and Google now do everything) and read about warranty and store policies.
2. Try it on, open it up, try it out, BEFORE you buy it.
3. Ask questions. The shady coat guy might have got nervous and abandoned swindling my dad if he had started asking too many questions.
4. Ask for a second opinion. "Would you buy this?", or getting two home inspections.
5. Don't impulse buy. Sure, walk around the store with the item in your cart, but make sure you dig a little bit into the product and ask yourself why something is so cheap
No comments:
Post a Comment